Psychiatry is undoubtedly experiencing something of a crisis. It is a clean and currently self-contained crisis, one that rarely troubles national headlines or makes it into the everyday conversations of workers in the office or the clothes shop floor, but it is a crisis nonetheless. Whilst the so-called anti-psychiatry movement of the 60s had a libertarian and experimental edge to it that courted controversy and political radicals, the “rational anti-psychiatry” or “critical psychiatry” of today is a lot less exuberant, more level headed and nuanced but, perhaps because of that, grips the imagination of the mass of people much less. This is weird. Its weird because when mental health issues do hit the headlines it is to warn us of epidemics of depression, anxiety and dementia; or to warn us of the terrible lunatics that roam the streets whenever “a schizophrenic” kills someone in the street or “psychopath” stalks…